Museum commissions are architects' wet dreams. As museum jobs are usually private ventures funded by one-tenth percenters, or the widows of one-tenth percenters, the architect can ply their creative vision without the pushback they get on other jobs. For instance, on public buildings, they have to take input from politicians and the public. On private buildings funded by businessmen, they are forced to do conventional designs as the businessmen want square footage that can be leased out. Museum job budgets are usually a little more open-ended, too. That's why you wind up with a lot of unconventional buildings (Denver art museum, Walker art center in MN, Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and if you want to see something really out there, see the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia Spain).

I much prefer the blue bear to the mothership-landing-art-gallery. There's humor in the bear. The gallery's just ugly.

And don't lecture me that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's ugly and we all recognize that. Some will approve of it (heartily, in many cases) because, for some reason, they like to poke sticks in our eyes.

Art galleries and college campi are the repositories of the ugliest architecture man has created. What's the common denominator?